johniam

quote: Disagreement is not moral superiority, it's simply disagreement. quote: I believe that those who continue to embrace the "programming of twi"......the day will come, when the Lord will say "Depart from me. I never knew you." The reason he believes that is because he thinks he's morally superior. How do you know that the offshoots aren't healing the sick, mending the brokenhearted, and relieving heavy burdens? You don't! You just assume they aren't because your moral superiority makes it so. Jesus said "depart from me, I never knew you" before the day of Pentecost. He wasn't speaking to the church. See what happens when you depart from God's grace? You become debtor to do the whole law. The law of sin and death (Romans 8). Thanks, but I'll stick with the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus (same chapter).

quote: and johnyouare, what is your point exactly? asked with respect.... I had 2 points... 1) deprogramming is natural, based on our habit patterns. Anything done by one's self to help the process along will probably be counter productive (the hurrier I go the behinder I get), and the idea of kidnapping someone, tieing them up with duct tape, and force feeding them against their chosen belief system is.....rape? 2) you don't have to be in a cult to be anal about details, and being anal about details isn't always a bad thing. I was kind of agreeing with WG that the idea that stringing chairs and being mathematically meticulous about table utensils makes one more spiritual is a waste of time. I think Solomon said it best...(Eccl. 12:12) - And further, by these (words of the wise from the previous verse), my son, be admonished: of making many books there is no end; and much study is a weariness of the flesh. (v.13) Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God, and keep his commandments; for this is the whole duty of man. The reason much study is a weariness of the flesh is because that "study" always leads to activities, like stringing chairs, which is weariness of the flesh. The Pharisees laid grievous burdens on people and tithed their anise and cumin when they should have just treated those people better. I don't know just how "grievous" stringing chairs is, but you get the idea. quote: Or when they try to compare our life in the TWI commune to something that happened 2,000 freakin' years ago, in a totally different culture, under totally different circumstances.. I think we're supposed to compare ourselves to Christ and his followers and to God's people. So you don't even believe there is a spiritual side of life anymore?

I'm told that Hustler magazine once requested that readers send pictures of their stools for a contest that judged color, style, etc. As for 'keeping the torch lit', two of the spinoffs I've been exposed to have a 'radical' strategy for keeping it going. They get their KIDS involved!

quote: My cause since leaving the way int. has been to get my self deprogrammed and my family taken care of. That'll take care of itself. When I got into twi, I didn't think of it as getting deprogrammed from the world, I just started hanging out with different folks than my drug friends. The process seemed to accelerate when I went wow, hanging with twi believers 24/7, but it took care of itself. We're all creatures of habit in everything we do. quote: In the cafeteria at RC it was the same; everything had to be lined up perfectly. I remember being a reluctant participant in such activity and thinking I was supposed to learn something spiritual by sighting down a string to make sure each salt shaker, pepper shaker, knife-fork-spoon etc was perfectly aligned table to table to table and thinking, "this is really stupid busywork when they don't give us enough to eat in the first place." (Most of the food we grew went to NK for the important ones to enjoy.) What a load of manure! Takes a load of manure to grow food, doesn't it? Just kidding. Not trying to downplay that you feel it was wasted time. It just made me think. As a window cleaner, I have several restaurants on my route. Most of them they don't care how the condiments and utensils are placed. Even the pricier ones, but one of them, a weekly account at that, is like that. Mike Shannon is a current STL Cardinal broadcaster and former player. He has a fancy restaurant one block away from the stadium. To clean the windows, I have to get there sometime between 8:30 and 9AM. I can't help stopping sometimes to look at the display cases and the many large photos on the walls. The place could almost charge a museum/art gallery fee. Most of the tables have shiny white tablecloths, silverware meticulously wrapped in cloth napkins and a water glass adjacent to the plate the same way for every plate. But that's only one restaurant out of at least a dozen that I do. Plus the atmosphere is friendly and pleasant from the managers down to the kitchen crew.

quote: johniam immature? who would ever believe that? johniam, have your wife smack you in the head for us. Why, is that what YOUR wife does when YOU act up?

Excuse me, Waysider, but you're the one who posted about "what our poop should look like". Again, just exactly how did they check on this? Outandabout, how wide is your keyboard? You can't just look at something and estimate it's size?

What your poop was supposed to look like???? That reminds me of a story. I was breakfast mgr of a Burger King. This one day I got there 30-45 minutes early to do weekly inventory. I did it and then had an urgent bm. The guy who usually showed up when I did wasn't a morning person, but I brightened up that day for him. When he got done with his pre opening work, I told him to immediately come to the bathroom. I acted like I was mad at him. Maybe this is a guy thing, but he came in and I showed him...my biggest single turd EVER. 18 inches long. Still a record to this day. Told the guy I had to show SOMEBODY. It brightened up his day, but it probably would've got me kicked out of the corps. Only a devil spirit could make a turd like that. So Waysider, what exactly did they do? Did someone hide in the next stall and say, "DON'T FLUSH THAT"! Let's have a look. OK, bro. See that green streak there? Now, bro...you need to work on your believing. That green streak shouldn't be there, OK? What did they do?

At Dennys they do wonderful things with eggs...(whispered) they cook them! And Some auditoriums do wonderful things with seats...they attach them to the floor!

quote: ...lots of people in the Way's leadership mistook kindness for weakness. Perhaps they were envious. They can't be in kindness mode because they're "leaders", so if someone else shows effortless kindness (not unusual for a believer walking in love)this is a "problem" to a leader cutting his teeth...or sharpening them. It comes to the humble realization that if you're going to be a good leader at anything, you need major contributions from those that follow you.

I think it boils down to 'a time for every purpose under heaven'. A time to retemorize, a time to 'refrain from retemorizing'. There was a way corps promotional film which had a ficticious guy named Ben Taylor going in the corps. One day he was mowing the lawn and he was retemortizing while mowing, thinking he was being spiritual. He missed a row and LCM reproved him for it. Hence: a time to refrain from retemorizing. In my own experiences, I was grateful for having had to diagram sentences in 5th grade. The teacher would write a sentence on the black board and we had to identify the parts of speech (noun, verb, etc.) of every word in the sentence. This led to identifying prepositional phrases, adjective and adverb clauses, and the like. So when memorizing verses of scripture, I found it easier to do if I broke the verse down into bite size sections separated by phrases, clauses, subject predicate flow, and such. I'm told they don't require elementary students to do this anymore. As for when it was 'a time to retemorize', the best times were when under pressure. If I was alone it always seemed to help if I ran retemories through my mind; made the pressure go away. Of course, I never tried running the Gettysburg Address through my mind. That might have made the pressure go away as well.

Did twi tell you in not so many words that the reason you were bullied and abused was because of your believing? I was, as a child, mistreated SOMETIMES, but even back then I thought it was, what amounts to, that's the way the socialogical cookie crumbles. In twi I prayed about stuff like that, but those twi people were not unkind to me and that seemed to make a big difference.

Back in the 70s churches were strict about a lot of things. Even Protestant churches. They didn't just want you to not drink, smoke, etc. they wanted you to not play outside on Sundays, not say words like gosh, golly, or darn, they were really strict about silly stuff. If that was your dominating image of churches then groups like twi were a breath of fresh air. But churches HAVE lightened up. Now it's the other way around. The mega church is the breath of fresh air for those people. In the mega church there is plenty of room for individualism. They basically have the twig, branch, limb, and region meeting in the same building every week. We have attended megachurches in MI and in STL. The ones we went to seemed pretty organized. I'm wondering something, though. I always thought that one of the big reasons why twi was labeled a cult was because they weren't part of the National Council of churches. TWI was big enough to be considered a potential threat to the "big boys" so to speak and the cult label was to keep them down. So what I'm wondering is, why do the mega churches not get labeled like that? They gotta be raking in more $ than twi ever did with 8 million strong. Are they independent or are they part of the NCC or some big denominations that are part of the NCC? They gotta be financially connected SOMEWHERE. Or do they?

quote: Were they genuine... Was it at night? Was there a campfire? Were any owls present? Sounds like it was 2/3 genuine.

For what it's worth, while I was wow (77/78) 2 8th corps couples stayed with us for a week and one of the men said that a Rev. Chas. Quillan told the whole in res. corps that Rocky spiritually stunk.

quote: how old are they Don't know about Wanda, but I think Howard turns 80 this year. BTW Don W would be 71 if he were still alive.

quote: Just out of curiosity Johniam...what offshoot were you speaking about? It is affiliated with Chris Geer. It's called STL bible fellowship. We do ABS as we did in twi and every offshoot we ever regularly attended. But if we ever needed help with something, these folks have never shown a hint of a condescending attitude, unlike twi.

I have thought of another analogy. What if evidence showed up that revealed that Thomas Edison was a serial adulterer who was sexually and verbally abusive to those who served him and that he stole his ideas from someone else before getting credit for inventing electricity and other things? I read that he COULD be verbally abusive to those who worked for him. But does that mean I shouldn't use electricity anymore? TWI worked for me. If I had NOT hooked up with twi I probably would have spent my adult life in and out of prison. I was already involved in a criminal activity; drugs. I already had 2 arrests for it. TWI didn't "rehabilitate" me, they just got me away from my drug friends long enough so that I could decide on my own to stay away from that whole lifestyle. Satanic organization? I don't think so! I didn't know VP. He didn't do everything on his own; he needed help to start TWI and he needed help every step of the way. Sure, lot of bad things happen, but lot of good as well. I really can't imagine what my life would have been like had I not gotten in twi. Sorry if that's not what you want to hear. Also, I don't want to be conformed to this world. This world constantly strains at a gnat and swallows at a camel. Environmentalism, animals' rights, politically correct, feminism, and the premium on education are just some of the ways the world strains at a gnat. All those things are way more important than God and his word to many people. Being in twi helped me see that.

quote: That's why every cult, not just TWI, but the offshoots, Amway, Mars Hill, etc., put such a premium on COMMITMENT! Funny, I've been with an offshoot for 7 years now and this "premium on committment" you speak of I haven't yet seen.

quote: So no... twi did NOT provide "space to sort stuff out." I was referring to the entire 8 years, not just my wow year. I don't know...you make twi sound so continuously oppressive, but that wasn't my experience. Every year I went to the ROA and saw believers from other places and never had the feeling there was anything seriously wrong. Just other people blessed to be believers, like me. My wow year had some blooper reels in it too. One of the girls banged some guy in a park; didn't know she was being seen by several people. Whoops. She was finally sent packing 2 months before the ROA. Me and my wow brother smoked dope from time to time too. But after the wow year, routine twi life was pretty tame. Something occurs to me. It's a lot easier to control people if they can't communicate with each other. The first time large numbers of people attempted to communicate with each other outside of the way tree structure was after the pop was read. People knew they weren't getting the truth from HQ. This hadn't happened before. Back then there was no internet, just ma bell. HQ thought they could sweep it under the rug. In my area they had a meeting with the limb leader. Only AC grads allowed. The tone of the meeting was divisive. Several people who weren't in charge got really opinionated. It was chaos. Turned out to be the tip of the iceberg. For the first time it was unclear who was really in charge, not just in my area, at HQ as well. My wife worked in a chinese restaurant off and on for 12 years. The owners of the restaurant are Cantonese and do not speak Mandarin. Every so often someone would come into the place who only spoke Mandarin. Someone in the kitchen would have to come out and translate. There are several other chinese languages. I imagine it is easier for the Chinese govt to control all those people if large numbers of them can't communicate with each other. In the USA all the English we speak is written the same everywhere. But in twi nobody had any inclination to seriously question the motives at HQ until 1986. Well, not LARGE numbers. This DOES make for some interesting discussion.

quote: Life does NOT stand still for any of us. / life is not lived in an isolated commune of halleluahs. I totally agree. I spent 18 years in twi. This October will mark 18 years since leaving. The first year was really good. New friends, new belief system, peace with God, all that stuff. But I still had all my old friends, too. Drug friends. Distractions. So I went wow, staying in the state I was sent to for a total of 8 years. Looking back, those 8 years were good. I was single. All I had to do was make enough money to contribute to the family fund. Got away from my drug friends. Got an arm's length distance from my family. Summary and conclusion? I got SPACE to sort stuff out. Sure, my whole life was twi, but that was my choice. TWI was NOT so invasive that I couldn't sort stuff out. I wasn't a total twi robot; I went to college during those years. I ran a twig for 3 years too. Those 8 years were like pushing the pause button on my life, living in a much needed greenhouse, then resuming my life by moving back to MI where I got in the word. After moving back there now twi became more of an arm's length relationship. Got promoted to management at my job, got married, 3 kids, plus my mother's health was in decline and I had to make sure she was OK while she lived. twi became more and more on the back burner. I agree also that twi displayed very BAD stewardship of people by trying to guilt and coerce them to make committments they had neither heart nor time to give. During my 8 years in MO I saw very little of this, not enough to be disturbing, but if I have a wife and 3 kids and 2 of the 3 are special ed and they say my wife isn't spiritual enough to be in "God's elite household"....WTF? Wasn't a hard choice to leave. I suspect the military is also guilty of coercing people into becoming "lifers". People who want to have lives. People who really don't want to be military robots all their lives. Some bosses at jobs are like that, too. You think that going on salary is a sign of success, but once they put you on salary they think they own you. Then they make you work like you're a piece of meat. Not all jobs are like that, but I know SOME are. Again, bad stewardship of people. This is among the "all evil" the love of money is the root of, IMO. If twi would have just let people live and trusted God to supply them with willing hearts for service, like many of us had at one time, then twi'd probably still have the numbers they had 30 years ago.

Hmm. I guess that means that when LCM was ousted in 2000 a void was created and that's the REAL reason 911 happened. Right?

quote: I always find it ironic how you, johniam, come to wierwille's defense. I find it "ironic" that you start a thread about fiery confrontations and dissenting leadership, yet, you execute fiery confrontation when I dissent. I wonder how loud your voice would be if you spoke (yelled) what you post to me. Plus, I all but agreed with you about VP yelling. He never yelled at me, but if he had, I might feel much differently about him. quote: I can't possibly take your post as credible when you twist the scriptures and distort their meanings. Credibility? You seem to have a socialistic view of credibility. Like you think if someone has too much credibility then there's not enough of it for others. And I might have too much. I don't think it works that way. You think you're waaaaaay up there and VP is waaaaay down here and when I poke holes in your moral superiority it reveals a level playing field which you refuse to concede. Jesus did yell at Peter. He called him satan for impact. There's plenty of scripture in which it plainly says there was a spirit present when Jesus confronted it. Not when he said to peter get thee behind me satan. Perhaps YOU are the one who is twisting scripture. Sometimes people say blasphemous things because there's a spirit present; other times people say things because they have bad thinking habits and there doesn't have to be a spirit present. Personally, I don't like being yelled at and I don't like yelling at people.

quote: johniam.......Jesus confronted SATAN, not Peter. Dude, he was looking at Peter when he said that. Hello? Are you saying Peter was possessed?

I remember the Living Victoriously class (June/July 1982). It was an advanced class special; there was no AC that year. We had time off in the afternoons but during all meals Moynihan and Jenkinson got on the microphones and held our hands till the end of the meal. It was light, not heavy, but yeah, give me my space. I agree.